Mike Leggett
| Special to Austin American-Statesman
LAKE CITY, Colo. — The Lake Fork of the Gunnison was running cold and clear when I took my first tentative steps from shore, feeling my wading boots sliding off the smooth river rocks on the bottom.
It was the first of four days of fly fishing with Andrew Sansom on what has become his home water after he and his wife, Nona, purchased a collection of wooden cabins along the main street in the small mountain town of Lake City. Time and circumstances had conspired to keep us from making the long drive from Burnet to Lake City to try the fishing for rainbows, browns and brook trout that live in the streams around the area.
I was primed for the first cast of the dry/dropper loaded to my five-weight, which I had never used until this trip. I waded in, looking for the right place to drop the dry fly with the tiny imitation hatchling and was about to cast to a small eddy on the far shore, but my false cast had to wait.
“Hey, I’m leaking,” I squeaked, as a tide of ice-cold mountain stream began migrating from the river into my waders. There was a hole at about the knee on the right side of the high-dollar Simms waders, which I’d worn for the first time since last year in Alaska. I experienced that sickly feeling of water rushing into that boot, soaking my sock and sending a chill up my leg.
An early problem followed by a big catch
I had a new ,sudden shock when a similar leak began letting water into my left boot. Not another one, I thought. Those waders had been hanging in my equipment closet since I returned from Alaska.
“Looks like a mouse,” said our guide, Darren Hardy.
Actually it looked like a herd of mice had invaded that closet and set about chewing holes up and down my brand new waders. I began making plans to replace them at the fly shop in town but was interrupted by a hard strike on the edge of a small eddy near the back of a tiny island created by declining water levels.
The fish jumped high and often before allowing himself to be drawn into the let. He was a beautifully colored 19-inch brown trout with spots that looked like dark eyes against the golden scales of his sides. Darren held him up for photos and then told me to put the fly back into the same spot.
“There should be another one holding in that same place,” he said.
One thing I can do with a fly rod is hit the tiniest target from almost anywhere, and the fly had barely touched the water when a twin of the fish I’d just released slammed the fly with an eager attempt to outfight his buddy. He jumped the narrow spit of rocks and landed in the water on the back side.
One hard jump and he had managed his release without being touched. That was OK, though. There were plenty more where he came from.
Sansom and I fished until midafternoon, hooking and landing more than 20 fish each.
Finishing with a perfect day
We decided to pass on the next day after spending the bulk of that first outing fighting some of the roughest river terrain I’ve ever seen. We elected to rest up before trying again, this time on Sebolla Creek, where my first stop yielded eight trout from a single hole. They were browns ranging from 8 to 15 inches.
Trout native to swift streams typically don’t reach the bulky sizes that fish do in lakes with a more plentiful forage base. However, using three- and five-weight rods proved perfect for the fish we were catching. Well more than 50, according to our guide Peter Breeden.
It was a perfect day on the water, with soft breezes and no leaks. The trout bit from the first cast until the last, most of them browns, which was to be expected.
“These browns are more aggressive feeders,” Breeden said.
I had a perfect instance that proved it when I let my fly drift down against the far bank of a hole I was fishing. I left a light pickup and began stripping line to draw the fish to the net. I had managed to get him about a rod’s length away when I picked up the rod tip to show a 15-inch brown hanging straight down.
As I admired the fish, he opened his mouth and dropped back into the creek, leaving a 4-inch baby brown hanging from the hook.
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Publish date : 2024-08-25 02:02:00
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